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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Jun-Yi Zhang, Xiao Yan (CNNC Key Laboratory on Reactor Thermal Hydraulics Technology), Ze-Jun Xiao (Hualong Pressurized Water Reactor Technology Corporation, Ltd.), Yong-Ze Xu (CD-adapco)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1134-1143
Subcooled boiling heat transfer, which is related to Departure of Nucleate Boiling(DNB), is highly concerned in fuel assembly of PWR. It is of importance and significance to predict void fraction and mass/energy transfer characteristics among sub-channels under subcooled boiling with 3-D CFD code to obtain more details for better understanding of two-phase flow process in rod bundle. To better understand and predict void distribution and its transportation characteristics in rod bundle, two-phase flow simulation with two-fluid model was carried out with Heat Partitioning Model. In this study, the 5×5 full length PSBT rod bundle with Uniform-Axial Power Distribution (U-APD) was used under prototype condition (test serial of B5 configuration) to test the physical method. The parameter distribution in axial and radial orientation among different sub-channels at the downstream of the last Mixing Vane Grid(MVG), where the DNB occurs at the end of the heated section, was studied. Different void fraction distribution was observed among central channels, side channels and corner channels. It is induced by different mass transfer process results from the layout of mixing vanes. Moreover, different mass transfer characteristics occurred between corner channels at the different location. Energy transfer is related to the mass transfer among sub-channels. The simple support grid (SSG) shows a suppression of radial transverse flow which is introduced by the mixing vanes for heat transfer enhancement.